Tam Dalyell: Lockerbie papers may hide Faustian pact of US and Iran

Published on Thursday 20 August 2009 22:01

WHEN I heard that Foreign Secretary David Miliband has imposed a public interest immunity certificate (PIIC) on the Lockerbie papers I was shocked. But perhaps I should not have been surprised.

The decision means the Lockerbie papers can never be published – not even years after the event.

I am a scarred veteran of PIICs going back to the case of Harold Wilson, Colonel Sammy Lohen and the D-notices of 1966, having sat for 11 days in the Old Bailey during the trial of Clive Ponting, having been immersed in the Matrix Churchill affair.

In my experience, PIICs have little to do with national security and one heck of a deal to do with political embarrassment. This is palpably so in the decision made by Mr Miliband.

In my view, what Mr Miliband does not want revealed is the calculated wickedness of the US government and the collusion of certain parts of Whitehall in scapegoating Libya and Mr Megrahi for the heinous crime of bringing an airliner down over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988.

There is a danger now that we will never know the truth about what happened.

It is a fact that $10 million was paid to a Palestinian group by the Iranians on 23 December, 1988.

The Iranian interior minister had promised that the sky would rain with blood after the shooting down of a passenger aeroplane by the US navy.

There will always be the suspicion that the US made a Faustian pact with Iran.